Apple is slowly but surely eliminating the need to take anything with you except your iPhone. The company is trying to replace the wallet with Apple Pay, and now it’s trying to take the place of your car keys with the new CarKey feature referenced in the iOS 13.4 beta.
The new feature will essentially allow users to unlock, lock, and start certain NFC-compatible cars. The “keys” themselves can be seen in the Wallet app — and even shared with other people, directly through the Messages app.
Similar to smart house keys, it means you can temporarily grant access to a friend who might need to use your car, for example, and then revoke access when they’re done. When you share a key with a friend or family member, they’ll be able to use it by holding their phone to an NFC reader inside of the car. You can permanently grant access to a car, like you might want to with your spouse or significant other, as well as temporarily grant access, like to a valet driver or a mechanic.
CarKey is aimed at being relatively safe too — for example, someone won’t be able to access your car simply by holding your phone. The feature will be locked behind features like Face ID or Touch ID to ensure that the person trying to access the car actually has permission.
Of course, it may take some time before CarKey is a widely used feature. That’s because car manufacturers will have to build NFC readers into their cars. As noted by MacRumors, Apple is a member of the Car Connectivity Consortium, which recently announced the Digital Key 2.0 specification — which itself is based on NFC. As such, it won’t just be Apple pushing for NFC connectivity in cars — it may be a standardized feature over the next few years.
The CarKey feature will likely launch officially alongside iOS 13.4, and it may be announced by Apple on stage at a rumored March 31 event. Also rumored for that event is a new low-cost iPhone — though some reports indicate that the manufacturing of the upcoming device has been affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
If you want to know more, you can also check out our guide on what Apple CarPlay is.
Merely days after the iPhone Duo hit the shelves, images of broken screens on the phone started popping up across social media. Until now, it’s been unclear what’s causing the line of defective pixels that appears vertically along the crease, as well as horizontally, on the phone’s inner display.
Apple has finally acknowledged the issue, which has shown up on iPhone Duo units owned by customers as well as demo units in stores. In a statement shared with Bloomberg, Apple says that not all iPhone Duo units are affected and that those that are tend to show the display fault early on. The company added that users who experience problems with their iPhone Duo display should contact AppleCare for a replacement.
Not long ago, Apple treated independent repair like an act of outright hostility. The Cupertino giant locked down parts with serial-number pairing, while repair tools remained firmly out of reach of anyone outside its authorized repair network. More importantly, the company waged a legal and lobbying battle against right-to-repair legislation.
I've covered enough of these fights over the years to know what a shift looks like. That's why what happened in October 2026 genuinely caught me off guard. The day the iPhone Duo went on sale, what may be the most mechanically complex iPhone to date, Apple pulled off a surprising about-face. It published teardown-style repair manuals for a handful of major components.
Apple's first foldable phone is now on shelves, in short supply, but with an unreal amount of buzz around it. After all, it's the first foldable iPhone, and there's plenty that this phone gets right. But there's also a lot that is either broken or underwhelming. What's peculiar is the dialogue around this phone, and how it has completely overshadowed every other attempt at making a phone with a similar form factor.
I've spent some time with the iPhone Duo, and I've used the Galaxy Z Fold 8 for almost three months now. In my opinion, Samsung deserves more credit. When the Galaxy Z Fold 8 arrived earlier this year, it was celebrated in some circles and ridiculed in others for supposedly copying what Apple would eventually deliver with the iPhone Duo. The dialogue was pretty odd, for multiple reasons. Samsung has been making foldable phones for years, so claiming that it copied a product Apple hadn't even launched was simply absurd.